Publication

This working paper addresses the issue of illegal migrants from Bangladesh living in India and examines the securitization of the issue by various actors through history. The paper goes into the influences of political ideologies on the Indian State's response to the issue. It concludes that though the presence of illegal Bangladeshi migrants in India has serious implications for the Indian states, the securitization did not help in solving the problem, as history shows. According to the author, this failure calls for a reorientation of the Indian response, possibly desecuritization, and a national need to revisit India’s security issues and state responses.